Monday 19 January 2009

Enhancement BoE and crafted upgrades

After the post at World of Matticus, and Kam putting in around 1500 dps maximum last Naxxramas visit, I felt some upgrades were needed.

The following scored highly on my current enhancement scale. They are craftable BoE stuff so I can get them from guild crafters.

Titanium Impact Choker. I'll probably stick a hit gem in the socket as Kam is very under the hit cap (200 currently vs the cap of 367 iirc).

Ice Striker's Cloak. Kam's current cloak has 31 hit rating, whereas this has none, but is better otherwise.

Giantmaim Legguards. No hit rating but my current ones don't have any either.

Titanium Impact Band. This is a pretty nice ring, with a hit gem in it. But not as nice as...

Ring of Scarlet Shadows. Second only to this one in the places I can go, this blue ring is awesome. A big wodge of hit rating, a socket I can put a hit gem in, crit and AP the only problem here is that it is Unique-Equipped, otherwise I'd get two!

Titansteel Bonecrusher. Well obviously I want Kel'Thuzad's Reach but for now the Bonecrusher is very close.

Now one thing that is odd is that with these crafted items, the equivalent spellpower ones seem to score higher, for instance the Titanium Impact Band is lower than Titanium Spellshock Ring. I guess because I am using Flametongue and shocks, spell power is useful. Still, I steadfastly refuse to grab spellpower items so am stubbornly getting the melee ones instead.

Also the spellpower weapons such as Titansteel Guardian rate higher because of their stats. But again I'm not taking spell power weapons. It would be interesting to equip an epic spellpower weapon to test the DPS difference, if I got one off-spec for my healing set.

Other crafted gear Kam is currently wearing includes:
Swiftarrow Helm
Razorstrike Breastplate
Eaglebane Bracers
Leggings of Visceral Strikes
Along with BoE drops of:
Spored Tendrils Spaulders
Belt of Tasseled Lanterns
Boots of the Terrestrial Guardian

My off hand could do with some upgrading too, I have an eye on Pride but before I get the required 50 emblems I'll probably pick up the Crimson Cranium Crusher or Unholy Persuader. Confusingly the scale seems to suggest that Kam's current dagger is better than the Persuader by 170 points, but when I ran an Enhsim with the values for the Unholy Persuader put in, Kam gets 30 extra DPS with the Persuader. Most odd, but I trust the sim rather than the scales it generates. When Kam gets a different, slow off hand, I shall do some dummy tests to see if the dagger really is better as the scale claims. This is without even thinking about dual wielding the Brunnhildar Axe with FB/FT. Ye gods.

In conclusion I'd say deciding on a weapon upgrade is difficult, but at least the rest of Kam's gear can be upgraded without (too much) confusion.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know very much about shamans, but it seems like you could use a chunk more Strength.

That and some hunters who read this might be crying.

Anonymous said...

Enhance shaman gear has always been kind of difficult to obtain. Like Klinderas said you want to look for gear with strength, but unfortunately most of the mail dps gear your going to see has agility and not strength. Basically you want anything with crit, hit (until you are maxed out) and AP/strength. Don't be afraid to grab leather either.

Unknown said...

No to strength. Yes to agility (ant Int, thanks to Mental Dexterity) Remember that the old Shaman STR-to-AP fascination was changed at the start of WotLK. Hunter gear IS Enh. Shaman gear now (or at least, pretty darn close).

As for gear, I am high on the crafted LW Trollwoven Spaulders, even though they are leather.

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